# 3

# share.

I gave away the gist of this chapter in the previous chapter. My ‘lightbulb is on’ - aha moment came when I realized that if the ‘problem’ is death and the desire to die, then the answer is life and the desire to live.

Death. Dying. And the desire to die. Dead.

Life. Living. And the desire to live. Alive.

I’m not sure of the exact timing the depth of the insight really hit me. The next level realization came when I visualized myself facilitating the risk assessments. The person on the other side (me) was not alive. Ironically, I could see the life in the student that was sitting across from me. More specifically, I could feel it.

When I looked at them in these assessments, I would feel what I have named ‘the gush’. An expansive, open feeling, a knowing…what I would call love. Love without conditions put on it. I always assumed it was what their parents must feel when they looked at them - until the number of kids I spent time with included kids who did not have the ‘parent’ present…which made the whole gush somewhat of a mystery - but it felt good, so it didn’t really matter what its orientation was. It felt right. It felt very much alive. It felt like what I would call ‘truth’. I wanted the student to feel what I felt. I wanted to know how to transfer this ‘knowing’ that they were okay. If they could feel what I felt, they too would know they’re okay.

As easily as I could sense this ‘love’ during the time I spent with the students, particularly during these 1:1 meetings, I couldn’t find this feeling toward myself. The thought of thinking or caring about myself this way was disconnected. It seemed unrecognizable, but also unreasonable. I needed to suffer. I needed to be in opposition to myself - to hold my own self accountable for my mistakes and shortcomings. I needed to be critical and judgmental of myself because that is somehow justified as morally sound and ‘right’. I was depressed. I was unhappy. I was not alive.

I realized that if I really desired to uncover the skills that lead to authentic and lasting outcomes that would change the results of student death by suicide and school violence, then I had an opportunity to uncover, apply, and practice the skills on me. If I could discover the skills, tools, and strategies that returned life to me, then it would be easy to share them with others. Now it was about finding the skills.

The students were being prescribed Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) when they were seen at the emergency room for self harm, or when they were released after being hospitalized. DBT appeared to be a series of weekly group sessions held at the hospital. At the time, the hospital was miles away from the high school I was located. Let’s just say that the students were not attending the sessions with any sort of fidelity. I figured this DBT could be a starting point. What was DBT? What were the skills?